On this day in 24 September 1991, an Australian scientist called Brian O’Brien gave a seminar called “Greenhouse Myths and Messages” at a seminar of the Tasman Institute. The Tasman Institute had been set up pretty much to combat momentum towards environmental protection legislation. They published a series of “reports” and seminars/speaker tours (including international visitors).
O’Brien is dead now, so libel laws don’t apply.
What a prick. What an arrogant moron.
His obituary here https://www.uwa.edu.au/news/Article/2020/August/UWA-physicist-leaves-behind-stellar-legacy
is suitably silent on his disgraceful and damaging action on climate change (there’s a lot more than a mere seminar.”)
The context – Tasman – and others – were trying to kill off proposals for economic responses to carbon dioxide build-up, especially a carbon tax. This seminar will have been scheduled in the knowledge that the draft chapters of the “Ecologically Sustainable Development” process were to be released. A seminar like this would provide a nice hook for a press release/puff piece by a sympathetic journalist… That’s how this stuff works.
On this day the PPM was 352.34
Now it is 420ish – but see here for the latest.
Why this matters.
Old men with relevance deprivation syndrome throwing their weight and over-confidence around. Gaia help us all.
What happened next?
The Tasman Institute was a dead duck by the late 90s – with the arrival of a Liberal National Government there was no need for it, and its sponsors pulled the plug.
O’Brien may or may not have had second thoughts. I don’t know or care. When it mattered, he was wrong.